Monday, October 01, 2007

""We needed some way to kind of gap me"

While waiting to be confirmed by the White House for a top civilian post at the Air Force last year, Charles D. Riechers was out of work and wanted a paycheck. So the Air Force helped arrange a job through an intelligence contractor that required him to do no work for the company, according to documents and interviews.

For two months, Riechers held the title of senior technical adviser and received about $13,400 a month at Commonwealth Research Institute, or CRI, a nonprofit firm in Johnstown, Pa., according to his r[e]sum[e]. But during that time he actually worked for Sue C. Payton, assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, on projects that had nothing to do with CRI, he said.

"I really didn't do anything for CRI," said Riechers, now principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. "I got a paycheck from them."

Ya gotta read this one all the way through, and with attention. It just keeps getting better and better.

Anyone up for a group fisk and/or whack? This one strikes me as ripe for grief from all sides, in one way and/or another.

Me, I'm busy trying to cough up the hairball--that, and trying to decide if Reichers' honesty is refreshing, or--to put it charitably--just another symbol of the sort of brazen tone-deafedness and cocky stupidity with which we are already excessively burdened.

Update: I noted and am mindful of some oddities in the construction of this article. In this case, however, I consider them of lesser concern and implication.